149: Kenobi vs Vader!

early 1978 | age 9/10? Yes readers, it’s the most spectacular rendition of a duel in movie and comic history! It’s Ben Kenobi versus Darth Vader as you’ve never ever seen it before! Gnork!

Art Notes: Now that’s more like it

I love the pages from this 1st or 2nd version of the adaptation. The drawings are SO wobbly and SO crude! You can tell I was loving doing it, drawing unihibitedly like the wind, with wild abandon. I was most likely still only 9 years old.

Do you ever watch this duel as an older wiser adult and wonder“Had Alec Guinness ever even held a sword before shooting this”? To me, as a kid it was incredibly exciting. But look at old Alec now, nervously twirling his saber in wee circles, and feebly chancing little jabs as if he’s afraid of poking Dave Prowse in the eye! Our George noticed the drama-deficit too. It must have grated with him. In the following two films the saber duels were vastly superior—but the dialogue was still important, like it was in this scene. In the Prequel Trilogy (sigh) we got some extraordinarily choreographed and balletic sword fighting, but not much else. To each his own. George remarked that in A New Hope (this film), the two Jedi were old and tired. But the Prequels afforded him the opportunity to show the Jedi “in their prime.”

Shades of Gnasher the Dog, from the British Beano comic’s ‘Dennis the Menace’ series.

Do Chewie’s eyes look a bit bloodshot to you? That’s stress, that is.

I actually have a strong urge to read old Beano comics now. But to be honest, the last time I did that, they were staggeringly unfunny. Still, lots of charm! It’s another fascinating world.

More ZZIP please sir!

“Eeasy!
Darth ha!”

Eh?

9 year old me must have felt that this scene – as exciting, and more importantly as moving as it was—needed a bit more oomph. So Ben’s cockier and—moves a bit.

Ben and Darth duel to the death, in the most staggeringly competently drawn comic page of all time. For a 9 year old.

Original On-Set Noises! (in a comic)

Guess what else? We get some of the the on-set production sounds too! Before Ben Burtt laid on his brilliant sound effects all you had was the sounds of the actors’ painted, revolving wooden sticks banging each other. But this comic retains the ‘SCRAPE‘ noise of Ben’s stick striking Dave Prowse’s helmet! Wow! A wee nugget that wasn’t tweaked into oblivion. Maybe someday, George’ll put it back, when he does his movie adaptation of my comic: just like he added the sound of the Stormtrooper banging his head off the doorframe in the Special Edition!

Hiya Casey. It’s actually in the George tradition (which – sadly – became a worsening trait as time went on) of having more than one battle going on at once!
SW – 1 climactic battle
ESB – 2 battles
RotJ – 3
TPM – 4
AotC – lost count, can’t remember much about that blur of a movie despite seeing it dozens of times with my son
RotS – Ditto

Re: the colour. I think the sabers were done in green highlighter pen (amazing things!) and then I realised after seeing the film a second time that Darth’s should be red.
As always, thanks for commenting 😉

Still catching up. 🙂 Actually I’m trying to catch up time wise to another comic I am reading. Then I’m going to read this one, BMS and the other at about the same time – slowly as I don’t want to go through them too fast) I did skip reading comics for a few weeks too.
I meant to reply to your email and never did – sorry. I don’t know if that reply would show up here or not (I hardly comment).
Anyway as to my comment here – I actually LIKE the idea of more than one battle at once- it makes sense in RL. Of course I don’t like it if they get carried away like it sounds like they did in the last two movies. (I only watched the first pre-q) – I like what you did here- (and the comic before with the figures in the background) Was it in the movie? (I haven’t seen the movie in a loooong time.)